Steve Hamilton is a Tampa native and a graduate of the University of South Florida and the University of Missouri. He now lives in northern Kentucky. A career CPA, Steve has extensive experience involving all aspects of tax practice, including sophisticated income tax planning and handling of tax controversy matters for closely-held businesses and high-income individuals.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Will Yahoo take Alibaba For A Spin?

I have – on and
off – been following the Yahoo and Alibaba story.

It has to do
with a proposed spin of a corporate subsidiary. Unless someone has reason to be
there, corporate reorganizations – such as spins - are not the easiest reading.

To set it
up, Yahoo owns approximately 15% of Alibaba Group, which itself is a Chinese
internet giant. Yahoo has proposed spinning its Alibaba shares into a separate
publicly traded company. Spinning in a tax context means getting it out of Yahoo itself and into the hands of the shareholders. This in turn has caught the IRS’ eye, mostly because
Yahoo wants to do this on a tax-free basis.

There is gigantic
money here. Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba may be worth around $35 billion. Albeit
Yahoo is not intending to spin all its Alibaba stock, it would spin enough to
trigger an $8 to $10 billion tax – if its tax advisors do not get it right.

QUESTION: How would you like to be the tax honcho
that gives this thing a green light? No pressure …

We have
talked about reorganizations before. It is a complicated area of tax law, but they
have gained in importance as a means of mitigating the double taxation of corporations.
Proctor & Gamble, for example, uses
several flavors of reorganizations on a routine basis. What is different about Yahoo?

In general,
the IRS likes to see at least a couple of historically active businesses inside
the corporate shell. Perhaps one business makes soap and the other makes baby
lotion, and they have for as many years as Carter has liver pills. For whatever
reason, the soap business wants to go one way and the baby lotion business another.
The IRS sees two historically active businesses before and two afterwards. Comply
with some technicalities and the IRS is willing to accept that there exists a business
purpose for the reorganization – that is, a purpose other than avoiding the tax
man.

Let’s stir
the pot. Say that you stuff one of the companies with a lot of investment assets,
such as Alibaba stock. How does the IRS feel now?

Well, I
suppose that would vary. If the stock were 15% of total assets, I suspect you
would not draw a long, piercing stare from the IRS. What if it climbs to 50%, 60%,
70%? We can both anticipate the IRS getting increasingly cynical as those
percentages climb.

And that is
where Yahoo is going.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer

Yahoo is proposing
to stuff Yahoo Small Business, an existing small line of business, into a subsidiary.
Yahoo would then drop the Alibaba stock and spin the resulting subsidiary to
its shareholders. The value of the Alibaba
stock would completely dwarf the value of Yahoo Small Business.

But why?

Let’s say
the new company will be called Yaboo. Yaboo would be stuffed with so much
Alibaba stock that it would essentially be a “tracking” stock for Alibaba. Throw
in some market arbitrage and Alibaba may find Yaboo an attractive target for
acquisition.

Then again,
maybe Yahoo just wants to kick Yahoo Small Business out of the nest so it can
learn to fly. On the same plane of reality, I am still available if an NFL team
wants to make me an offer.

Generally
speaking, tax advisors approach the IRS when they get into these
high-stakes situations. They may meet informally in order to gauge IRS sentiment before requesting a private letter ruling, for
example. The ruling is “private” in that it is directed to one taxpayer (Yahoo)
and its unique facts (Alibaba). Yahoo’s advisors would meet with IRS attorneys
to discuss, review and argue. If the IRS agrees with the proposed transaction,
then Yahoo would request the ruling. If the IRS disagrees, Yahoo
would not. It is unlikely that you or I would do this, as failure to submit a ruling request would be considered invitation to an audit. A company the size of Yahoo is under constant audit, however, so this threat is considerably diminished.

You know –
absolutely know – that Yahoo is going to request a private letter ruling. There
is way too much money at stake here.

And then on
September 2 the IRS came out with Notice 2015-59, saying that it was stopping
its practice of issuing rulings on transactions that are suspiciously similar
to the proposed Yahoo spin.

Whoa.

Now what
does Yahoo do? Does it rely on an opinion from its law firm without an IRS ruling?
Does it retract the spin? Does it adjust the spin so the percentages of the
stock and active business are not so skewed?

Remember:
just because the IRS says it does not make it so. There is complex law here, and
a Court may have to decide.

For a tax
geek, this is like the latest installment of Mission Impossible.

About Me

Thirty years years in tax practice. It's a long time, and I have seen virtually everything short of the fabled tax-exempt unicorn. I was raised in Tampa, went to school in Missouri, taught at Eastern Kentucky University, lived in Georgia, got pulled to Cincinnati when I married, have in-laws in England and a daughter going to the University of Tennessee. I am not sure where I will wind up next, but I hope there is better weather.